Mark-Viverito told reporters she would take the hearing’s testimony and determine what more the city could do legislatively, including considering legislation to ban ICE officers from court. | William Alatriste for the New York City Council

City Council considers additional legislation to counter Trump immigration policies

A slew of immigrant advocates and New Yorkers who say they have been directly affected by President Donald Trump’s immigration orders gave testimony to the City Council's Immigration Committee Wednesday, as the Council weighs drawing up additional legislation to counter the president's policies.

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who attended the hearing, billed the public event as an opportunity for the Council to receive additional suggestions on what the city can do to prevent or outwardly refuse to comply with federal immigration policy.

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“We’ve been very clear as a City Council and as a city that we do adopt sanctuary city policies and we’re not shying away from that,” Mark-Viverito told reporters. “So we continue to look to ways at expanding what levels of influence we’ve had, what policies we’ve put in place, asking the people on the ground, 'what is your experience with the executive orders, what are you hearing, what else can we do as a city.'”

Last month, Mark-Viverito announced the Council will pursue legislation to ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from schools, city-owned public spaces and anywhere social services are administered. The Council has also passed legislation over the last three years to severely curtail the city’s cooperation with the federal Department of Homeland Security and to remove ICE officers from Rikers Island.

An executive order on immigration and border security Trump signed in January calls for ICE officers and customs and border patrol agents to remove from the country anyone convicted of any criminal offense. The instruction is a departure from policy under the Obama administration, which prioritized removal of undocumented immigrants who were convicted of serious crimes.

The Trump administration has also ended what was known informally as the “catch and release” policy, where individuals who could be deported were served a notice to appear in immigration court instead of being detained during removal proceedings. The time in between allowed lawyers to build a case while defendants remained with their family.

Officials from the Legal Aid Society told the Council that ending that practice is already having an effect on the city’s Immigrant Family Unity Project, a program that provides legal representation to non-citizens caught up in removal proceedings.

“Increasing detention has also created tremendous fear and panic in immigrant communities,” said Sarah Gillman, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society immigration law unit. “We have received calls from immigrants' families afraid to take their children to school or seek medical attention for fear of being detained.”

Advocates said Wednesday the new directive puts more people at risk of deportation and may deny undocumented residents the right to due process. Advocates also raised concerns about a reported recent increase in the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers present at court, and cited several instances where clients had been arrested after showing up to a routine court proceeding.

Conor Gleason, a supervising immigration attorney at the Bronx Defenders, told the Council that Trump's actions have directly lead to more immigration officers appearing at court.

“It is more likely now more than ever that ICE will be in our court houses, because officers are emboldened by the Trump administration priorities to seek out non-citizens merely charged with offenses,” Gleason said.

The Council also heard from immigrants impacted by the new rules, including a woman identified only as Lucy, whose husband was detained outside of court as she and her daughter watched. Lucy’s husband has been in custody since last month.

“Since that day we have been unable to see him,” Lucy said. “My husband was the protector and provider of our house. I had a family and a home but that has been broken since they separated him from us.”

Advocates also suggested the Council consider the possibility of studying the NYPD’s current arresting and booking protocol, which typically includes a question about whether the person is foreign-born.

Peter Markowitz, director of the immigration justice clinic at Cardozo Law School, told the Council the practice raises an immediate red flag for DHS as soon as an arrest is made.

“What happens with that information is that as soon as someone is fingerprinted, which is routinely done, the fingerprints together with the birth information travel to the immigration authorities,” Markowitz said.

According to Markowitz, immigration authorities, using a system known as “foreign-born no matches,” check their own database of people to see if that person has an unresolved immigration status.

“If the NYPD lists them as foreign-born, they now can become a target for immigration enforcement, and they do on scale,” he added. “This is the way that immigration learns about many undocumented New Yorkers and become targets of community raids.”

Mark-Viverito told reporters she would take the hearing’s testimony and determine what more the city could do legislatively, including considering legislation to ban ICE officers from court.

“Similar to other laws we have in place, we wanted to see if there are other ways in which we can limit ICE being able to be in spaces that are city-owned spaces,” Mark-Viverito said. “We are looking at what is the extent — obviously, there are private areas within those public facilities that they cannot access, and we want to make sure that is clearly on the books and on record. So we are looking at what else we can do on this front legally.”